I watched Highway (2012) for the first time today - and I don't get the hype.

Edit: I meant (2014)*

Ok so let me first state three things up front so any biases would be cleared out

• A lot of people enjoy shitting on alia because she's a nepo, I'm not one of them and I went with an open mind.
• The Imtiaz Ali brand of cinema is not for me- I didn't enjoy most of his films. Rather, I'm not a fan of Indian coming-of-age stories in general because they end up being a cringefest.
• Many of my friends (and reviews I read) told me that this is a good film, one of Alia's best.

disclaimers aside,

Highway, to me, was not an Alia Bhatt film at all. It was a Randeep Hooda film through and through. Watching the film from Alia's POV as Imtiaz intended it, made me physically cringe. Like toes curling level of cringe. Like audibly sigh in theatres level of cringe.

But then as the Hooda character starts developing, the film keeps getting better and better. The loneliness of a man who knows he is at a point of no return. A man who knows he does not deserve any love in his life. A man who knows that family and kids are not for him. A man for whom his mother is a distant memory. A bad man who, by all angles, is completely irredeemable.

And then comes the ending >! The character of Mahabir, who for years has been on the run, committing one crime after the other, running away from the law, sleeping with one eye open, and often not sleeping at all, finally gets everything he never thought he would. Someone who adores him unconditionally, someone who makes a home for him, someone who cooks for him - when would this ever happen to such an evil man. For probably the first time in his life, he wakes up without any stress - looks at this little girl running around the Himalayan valley, wakes up, and goes to her. And then you hear the BANG. !<

This character carries the film for me. Never a dull moment when he's on screen. Alia to me, was a big miss. Nothing she did landed. She was meant to be annoying, but she was also meant to be a character coming to her own self, discovering freedoms in captivity. But it just didn't land. Having a childlike wonder does not equal making a character into an actual child.

Do note that this is my personal view on that film, and by no means am I saying that a filmmaker as consistent as Imtiaz Ali is at fault here. I know a whole generation of people in their teens absolutely related to his characters, and this film came out when I was in my early twenties. At a little over 30, this film just doesn't work for me at all, at least from the lens he's intending to show it.

Curious as to how y'all view Highway, or basically other Indian self-discovery-coming-of-age cinema, especially from the last 20-25 years?

TLDR: Highway = Into the Mild

If you haven't seen highway, PVR is screening it over the women's day weekend, and possibly for a few days post that.